The Astronaut and the Fairy/Princess/Ballerina/Butterfly

On Sunday morning Lucie looked at me sadly and asked, "Mommy, how come Halloween is only one day?" We had so many celebrations leading up to the big night -- two pumpkin patch trips, a party at preschool, and countless costume discussions -- it's no wonder she felt let down when it was over. Halloween at age four is a lot of fun.

Ever the fashion lover, Lucie had two different looks this year, which was actually quite useful when attending both day and night time events. One was a princess gown, and the other was a fairy costume with a glittering, fuschia tutu. She sometimes was both a fairy and a princess, depending on whether she wore her tiara, butterfly wings, fairy crown, or some combination of the three. If it was pink and sparkled, it was part of her costume (not surprisingly, many girls in preschool shared this same costume criterion).

Ryan passed along his beloved fireman costume to Tate, and decided to be an astronaut this year. Grandpa gave him colorful patches of various space missions, and Ryan helped me sew several on his flight suit. The patches made an otherwise plain costume look quite special, and Ryan felt proud. He liked to tell people that he was off "to the moon!"

After a month's worth of build up, the kids were so excited to put on their costumes on Halloween night and make their tour of the neighborhood with Daddy. I stayed back to hand out candy at home and try to remember all the cute costumes I saw to report back later.

The kids returned from their trick-or-treating exhausted and toting plastic pumpkins brimming with candy. Apparently their candy got so heavy towards the end, they worked out a system where Daddy would carry the buckets between houses and then hand them over when it came time to collect more treats. The kids each dragged home what seemed to be nearly their body weight in candy.

Though they loved the experience as a whole, some aspects of the trick-or-treating adventure were quite unnerving for them. Any house that had too many cobwebs, dangling skeletons, teenagers in gory costumes, smoke machines, or most terrifying of all, recorded spooky noises, was declared "too scary" and completely bypassed. The preferred house decor was a nice, bright porch light with cheerfully carved pumpkins grinning on the front step, and a brimming bowl of Skittles (for Lucie) and M & M's (for Ryan) waiting inside.